The Chef

by Martin Suter

  If Andrea had not been there to witness the exchange, Maravan would have apologized at this point and gone back to his pans. But now he said bravely, ‘I’ve been cooking curries all my life.’

  ‘Oh really? Did you study curry? I’m terribly sorry, Doctor Curry. Or is it Professor?’

  Maravan did not know how to respond. Breaking the silence that ensued, Andrea said, ‘Well I’d like to try one of your curries sometime, Maravan. Will you cook one for me?’

  Maravan was so astonished he could not answer. He nodded.

  ‘Monday evening?’ The Huwyler was closed on Mondays.

  Maravan nodded.

  ‘Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  Smoke was now rising from Fink’s curry, and it smelt burnt.

  Maravan suspected that Andrea’s intervention would do him more harm than good. It had not only made Fink hostile towards him, but also stoked the envy of all the others. In spite of this, his heart was lighter than it had been in a long time. He blithely carried out the most mundane tasks and was not in the least bit bothered by the fact that nobody gave him anything more challenging to do that day.

  Had she meant it seriously? Did she really want him to cook for her? And where? At his place? The idea of his receiving and entertaining a woman like Andrea in his small flat made him doubt whether he would really be happy if she had meant it seriously.

  She left him stewing in this double uncertainty. When he was finally able to knock off from work she had already gone.

  Hans Staffel had never been to the Huwyler with his wife. For business purposes he had been forced to eat in the restaurant two or three times before, and after each occasion Béatrice had made him promise that he would take her there, too. But Staffel was like all managers: the moment he had the chance of an evening off, he would rather spend it at home.

  This time, however, there was no excuse. He had something to celebrate which, for now, he was able to share only with his wife. The chief editor of the most important business magazine in the country had told him in the strictest confidence that Hans Staffel was May’s Manager of the Month. In ten days’ time it would be official.

  Béatrice did not know this yet. He wanted to tell her between the amuse-bouche and meat course, when the time was right and the sommelier had just refilled their glasses.

  Staffel was the CEO of Kugag, an old family business that manufactured machinery. He had taken over twelve years previously and – in the words of the chief editor – regenerated the firm. He had convinced the owners to invest in a reorientation of the product range towards environmental technology, and to procure more capital by floating the company on the stock market. Kugag had bought a small firm with a number of patents for solar panel components and had rapidly become one of the biggest suppliers in the solar energy industry. Its market price had bucked the general trend by rising steadily, and Staffel himself had become a wealthy man. He had arranged for part of his salary to be paid in shares when the company floated, and these were still very valuable.

  They had ordered two Menus Surprises, Béatrice’s without any of the offal or frogs’ legs that might appear in the various dishes. Out of consideration he had advised the kitchen of these requirements in advance.

  The tall, pale waitress with the long, black hair all combed to the right had just brought the fish course: two giant glazed prawns on a rather nasty-tasting jelly. The sommelier poured out some champagne – they had decided to pass on the white wine and stay with champagne until they finished the fish course. It was as if this moment had been created for them specially.

  Staffel raised his glass, smiled at his wife, and waited for her to lift her glass too. As she did it she knew she was about to discover what it was she had to thank this evening for.

  At that moment somebody arrived at the table and said, ‘I don’t wish to disturb your celebrations, but I’d just like to offer my warm congratulations. Nobody deserves it more than you.’

  He gave the startled Staffel, who had made to stand up, a friendly handshake and then introduced himself to his wife. ‘Eric Dalmann. You can be rightly proud of your husband. If there were more like him we wouldn’t have to worry about any crisis.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Béatrice wanted to know when they were by themselves again.

  ‘I don’t know. Dalmann, Dalmann? Some sort of consultant, I don’t really know.’

  ‘Why was he congratulating you?’

  ‘I was just about to tell you: I’m Manager of the Month.’

  ‘And of course I’m the last to know as usual.’

  Maravan was busy putting away crockery when Andrea brought the plates back from table three. Fink rushed over to her, because he wanted to know what the customers had thought of his ‘Glazed langoustines with rice croquant on curried gelée’. It was the first surprise of the evening.

  The plates were empty apart from the heads of the langoustines and most of the curried gelée.

  Maravan pretended he had not noticed. But Andrea looked at the plates with a disbelieving shake of her head, offered Fink a pitying smile, turned to Maravan and said, ‘Is seven o’clock OK on Monday? Oh, and write your address down for me.’

  The following morning Maravan was the first customer in the Batticaloa Bazaar. It was his second visit in a few days. The first time he had given the owner 800 francs for Nangay’s medicine.

  The shop was not well stocked, only tinned foods and rice, no fruit, hardly any vegetables. There were, however, posters and flyers for organizations and events in the Tamil community and a few LTTE stickers: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Batticaloa Bazaar was less a grocer’s than a liaison office and contact point for the Tamils in exile, and the first port of call for unofficial money transfers to the north of Sri Lanka.

  Maravan went to work in a cheerful mood and kept up his good spirits in spite of all his team’s efforts to ruin them. His rendezvous with Andrea had of course become common knowledge – Monday evening, seven o’clock, at his place! – and it was as if they had all sworn to make his life as difficult as possible before then: Maravan, fetch this. Maravan, fetch that. Maravan, do this. Maravan!

  Kandan, the other Tamil kitchen help, was on duty. He was powerfully built, all brawn, slow on the uptake and without the slightest talent for cooking. And like many Tamil men in exile, he had an alcohol problem which he was able to disguise skilfully, although not from Maravan’s sensitive nose. Today he was assigned all the more demanding tasks, while Maravan rinsed, scoured, cleaned, scrubbed and lugged stuff around.

  An edgy atmosphere prevailed in the kitchen. There were few customers in the restaurant and a birthday party of twelve had cancelled their booking for the following evening. Huwyler was getting in the way, venting his bad mood on his chefs. And they passed it on to the demis chefs, who gave hell to the commis, who in turn laid into the kitchen helps.

  But Maravan was on top form. The moment Andrea started her shift he had discreetly slipped her his address. She had smiled and said – loudly enough so that Bertrand, who happened to be standing nearby, could hear – ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  Maravan knew what he was going to cook, apart from the odd detail which he would attend to the following day. And he also had a cunning plan for his technique of preparing the dinner.

  Maravan was sitting in front of the computer with headphones on. Nangay’s voice sounded weak, even though the connection was surprisingly good. He ought to have kept his money and let her die, she said reproachfully. She was tired.

  Nangay was over eighty, and ever since Maravan could remember she had wanted to die in peace.

  To begin with she was mistrustful and did not want to answer his questions. But when he said that it would allow him to earn more money, she listed ingredients and recipes, and freely explained everything to him in detail.

  It was a long conversation. And by the time it had finished Maravan’s notebook was almost full.

  4

  Happily, there had bee
n a good number of covers at the Huwyler the following Sunday afternoon. The evening was quiet, the last diners left early, as ever on a Sunday.

  Maravan was the last member of staff left in the kitchen. He was at the pan-cleaning sink, busy with the more intricate kitchen appliances: thermostats, jet smokers and rotary evaporators.

  He waited until the cleaners had come into the kitchen, took the gadgets to the equipment store, then went into the changing room.

  He deftly removed the glass elements of the rotary evaporator, rolled them up in two T-shirts, tucked them into a gym bag, making sure that they were well padded against the heavy main unit with its heat-bath holder and electronics.

  Maravan undressed, wrapped a Turkish towel around his waist, shoved his underwear into the gym bag, took shampoo and soap out of the side pocket, and went into the shower. Five minutes later he came out again, took the clothes bag out of his locker, and got dressed.

  On his way out he glanced again past the wine store. When he left the kitchen via the delivery entrance carrying a heavy gym bag, he was wearing black trousers, a dark-blue roll-neck sweater and his leather jacket. He did not smell of anything.

  He got going that same evening. He broke up the panicles of long pepper into their tiny corns, deseeded some dried Kashmir chillies, measured out black peppercorns, cardamom, caraway, fennel, fenugreek, coriander and mustard seeds, peeled turmeric root, broke up cinnamon sticks and roasted all of these in the iron pan to the point at which the full aroma of the ingredients unfurled. He mixed the spices in various, carefully weighed combinations, and ground them into fine powders which he either used that night or kept for the following day, sealed in airtight and labelled containers.

  The evaporator rotated well into the early hours with diverse ingredients: white curry paste, sali rice whisked with milk and chickpea flour, and – of course – the inimitable coconut oil with curry leaves and cinnamon.

  Some fresh butter was clarifying in a pan to make ghee, while in clay plots warm water and grated coconut were being mixed into a milk.

  Dawn was already breaking when Maravan lay down on his mattress on the bedroom floor for a short sleep full of strange erotic dreams. These were always interrupted when they got to the best bits.

  Andrea had been on the verge of calling Maravan and finding an excuse to cancel. She cursed herself for her Good Samaritan syndrome. Maravan would have managed without her. Maybe even better. Perhaps her stupid intervention had only made things more difficult for him. No, not perhaps. Definitely.

  Maravan was fortunate that these were the thoughts churning around Andrea’s mind. Otherwise she would not now have been sitting on the tram, with her handbag and a plastic bag containing a bottle of wine on her lap.

  She had decided to bring him a bottle of wine because she did not know whether Tamils drank. If they did not – and so did not offer any to their guests either – then she would be able to fall back on this bottle of Pinot Noir. Not a great wine, but decent enough. Probably better than anything a kitchen help could afford. If he had any wine in the house at all.

  The reason why she had stood up for Maravan was because she could not bear those chefs, especially Fink. Not because she had the hots for Maravan. She would have to let him know this straight away, a diplomatic mission she was well practised in.

  Her dislike of chefs grew with each change of job. Maybe it was because of the strict hierarchy that prevailed in kitchens. Because chefs behaved as if they had some sort of entitlement to the female waiting staff. That is how it seemed to her, anyway. In kitchens, even the humblest ones, a star cult prevailed which encouraged chefs to think they were irresistible.

  Every day Andrea asked herself why she did not simply change profession. And every day the same answer came back: because she had not learnt how to do anything else. She was a waitress and that was that.

  To begin with, she had wanted to manage a hotel or run a pub. She had started a course in hotel management, but got stuck in a traineeship as a waitress. She was soon fed up with college, and the possibility of working in a variety of hotels after a short apprenticeship – in summer by Lake Como or in Ischia, and in winter in the Engadin Valley or the Berner Oberland – seemed to suit her restless personality. If you looked as she did and knew how to get tips, the work was not badly paid. She had good references and experience, and had made it to the rank of demi chef de rang.

  She had also tried out other jobs. One of these had been as a tour rep abroad. The job had mainly consisted of holding up a sign at Kos Airport bearing the name of her tour operator, allocating the arriving guests to the various hotel buses and receiving their complaints. Andrea soon found that she would rather deal with underdone or overdone steaks than missing luggage or rooms that had a view of the street instead of the sea.

  Once she had even entered a beauty contest. She got past the first rounds and was thought to have a good chance of winning. Until she – the silly cow – had a moment of madness during a bathing costume photoshoot: when the photographer asked her whether she had ever modelled professionally before, she replied, ‘Not with so many clothes on.’

  Chez Huwyler was a well-respected establishment and would make a good impression on her CV. But only if she stuck it out longer than the usual few months. Half a year; a whole one would be even better.

  On the other side of the tram, opposite her, sat a man between thirty and forty. She could see him staring at her in the reflection of the window. Each time she turned her head he smiled at her. She took a well-thumbed free newspaper from the seat next to her and barricaded herself behind it.

  Maybe she should try to start from scratch again. She was only twenty-eight; she could still start a course. She had her secondary school certificate, which meant she could go to art school. Or at least sit the entrance exam. Photography, or even better, film. With a bit of luck you could get a grant. Or some other government assistance.

  Her stop was announced. Andrea stood up and went to the farther door to avoid having to pass the staring man.

  Okra was cooking in a pan with green chillies, onions, fenugreek seeds, red chilli powder, salt and curry leaves. The thick coconut milk was still in a bowl by the stove. Maravan had decided on okra as a vegetable because of its English name: ladies’ fingers.

  The pathiya kari was a female dish, too: it was prepared specially for breastfeeding mothers. He had simmered some poussin meat in a little water with onions, fenugreek, turmeric, garlic and salt, added to this broth one of the spice mixes from the previous night – coriander, cumin, pepper, chilli, tamarind paste – brought the whole thing to the boil, then taken it off the heat, and covered it. He would heat it up again shortly before serving.

  The male element of his menu was a dish of shark meat: churaa varai. He had mashed a cooked shark steak with grated coconut, turmeric, caraway and salt, and put this to one side. In an iron pan he had fried some onions in coconut oil until they were translucent, added dried chillies, onion seeds and curry leaves, stirring until the seeds started jumping, and taken the pan off the heat. Shortly before serving he would reheat it, add the shark-and-spice mixture, combining everything thoroughly.

  These three traditional dishes were Maravan’s proof that he knew how to cook curry, and an excuse for the other things he was creating on the side. He would make small, manageable portions and, as his one homage to experimental cooking, serve them with three different airs – coriander, mint and garlic foams – and curry leaf twigs glazed in nitrogen.

  Maravan owned an isolation tank in which he could store liquid nitrogen for a short period. It had cost him a fifth of his monthly wage, but it was an indispensable aid for his culinary experiments and his efforts to outshine the chefs at the Huwyler.

  What this dinner was really about, however, was the courses in between. Each one contained Ayurvedic aphrodisiacs, but in new, bold preparations. Instead of dividing all the purée of urad lentils marinated in sweetened milk into portions and drying these in the oven, he mix
ed half of it with agar. Both halves of the purée were spread on to silicon mats and cut into strips. The half without the agar was dried in the oven and twisted into spirals while still warm. He let the other half cool down and then wound the elastic ribbons around the spirals, which were now crunchy.

  Rather than serve the traditional mixture of saffron, milk and almonds in its usual liquid form, he used cream instead of milk, whisking it into an airy mixture with saffron, palm sugar, almonds and a little sesame oil, and then put three heaped plastic spoons of the saffron and almond foam into liquid nitrogen, for just long enough to form spheres, which were frozen on the outside and soft inside.

  He would serve them with sweet saffron ghee, which he spread on to strips of honey gel topped with threads of saffron, and then rolled them up. The saffron threads shone dark yellow through the opaque walls of these light yellow cylinders, which would be placed around the spheres.

  He gave a new structure to the mixture of ghee, long pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and palm sugar. He mixed still water with the palm sugar, reduced this by half in the rotary evaporator with the spices, added alginate and xanthan gum, allowed the air to escape from the bubbles and made little balls with the portion spoon. He placed these in a mixture of water and calcium lactate. Within minutes the balls were smooth and shiny, and he injected a small amount of warmed ghee into each one. He quickly turned them to make the prick close up again. The balls were kept warm at sixty degrees. They were for dessert.

  To go with the tea, he had prepared three varieties of sweetmeats, all made in the traditional way, of course, and all proven aphrodisiacs. He extracted the liquid from a pulp of sali rice and milk, and made a thick paste together with chickpea flour and sugar. He then added almonds, sultanas, dates, ground ginger and pepper, and worked it into a pastry, from which he cut little heart shapes. These were then baked and finally glazed with red fondant.